1989 Huntsville Tornado Stories: Shannon Dale Byrd

Wow ... 20 years. I don't have any extraordinarily special story to tell, but I do remember that night very well. I was 11 years old and had not been home from school at Madison County Elementary for very long. I was enjoying my normal afternoon ritual of lying in the floor downstairs at my parents' home, watching cartoons. In fact, I remember very well that I was watching Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers on Fox 54, when all of the sudden the electricity went out and my mother came running down the stairs telling us to get to the tornado shelter, as she had heard the tornado siren atop Green Mountain begin to wail.

We lived on Walter Bird Drive in the Big Cove Community, and everyone who lived on our road at the time was our kinfolk - my aunts, uncles or cousin. Seems like every time there was a tornado warning, we had a "tornado party," as the entire street came to our house to watch the weather, eat snacks, and be able to take advantage of our basement and tornado shelter should the storm get too close. But this time, it was different. This one came out of nowhere. The electricity was out, so we couldn't watch it on radar. We didn't know what was going on. The sky turned black so quickly. And the adults were scared - and we kids knew it. This was no party - it was potentially the real thing.

We listened to car radios and a few of my uncles were volunteer firefighters, so they had their fire radios on. Reports of touchdowns in the Airport Road area came in. The damage - devastating. Then reports of a tornado on the ground at Monte Sano and the Dug Hill area ... Now that was close to home.

It seemed like they were falling all around us. Bear in mind, I'm 11 years old at the time, and this kind of thing is perceived far differently through the eyes and mind of a child. In my mind, many of our neighbors had probably been killed or would be before the storm had finished lashing its furry. I remember very well standing in the garage next to my dad and looking up at him and saying, "A lot of people won't be at church this weekend." Fortunately I was wrong, and none of our friends and family fell victim to the storm, though many others around the area did.

The night seemed to last forever, but morning finally came. And as the sun gave first light across the Huntsville area, total realization of the damage and devastation began to sink in to its residents. Like many, we ignored pleas to stay home and not try to go out sight-seeing. We drove up U.S. 431 at Monte Sano and saw this huge path carved out in the trees - like God had taken his finger and just randomly drew a line in the sand. We didn't venture on into Huntsville; but as electricity was restored, images of Airport Road and other areas, along with stories recounting the horror of the previous evening, began to flood our television. This would be an event long remembered throughout the area. And it has been.

I never looked at tornados the same again. I never took the watches, warnings and drills at school lightly again. It changed me. Dan Satterfield and other local weathermen became trusted friends when the skies began to look gray. Twenty years later, I still feel changed - affected by the events that unfolded in the Huntsville area on Nov. 15, 1989 - and the occasion that local media forever tagged as "Tornado '89."